Top 10 Hoax That Broke the Internet | Popular Hoax People Think that is Real

Steven Spielberg killed a Triceratops

The post harkens to a Texas cheerleader who uploaded pictures from a hunting trip in Africa on Facebook earlier this month. Nineteen-year-old Kendall Jones, who went on her first big game hunt to Africa when she was 9, started an uproar across social media sites. It prompted a South African to post a petition on Change.org calling for Jones to be banned from African states.

British scientists clone dinosaur :

An extraordinary story of the world’s first cloned dinosaur got a lot of traction on Twitter and inspired alarmist comparisons to Jurassic Park in March this year. It was also, not unexpectedly, a complete fake, including completely fabricated quotations from ‘experts’ and a picture that is actually of a very young kangaroo.

World’s oldest tree has been accidentally chopped down by loggers in Peru

Several websites carried the “news”, seemingly without realizing the entire story appears to be a hoax. It first appeared on the World News Daily Report – a fake news website carrying articles including “Isis launches satellite” and “Pterodactyl sighting in New Guinea terrorises villagers”.

‘Nasa Confirms Six Days of Darkness in December 2014’

‘Satirical news site’ Huzlers.com has been spreading fake story about upcoming six days of darkness, far and wide on the web, taking in numerous Facebook and Twitter users and encouraging them to post about what they’re going to be up to during the six days of darkness. The story on the vaguely official looking website titled “Nasa Confirms Earth Will Experience 6 Days of Total Darkness in December 2014!” claims that an incoming solar storm is to blame, causing “dust and space debris to become plentiful and thus block 90% sunlight”. This is false. Although solar storms certainly are real phenomena (they occur due to fluctuations in the Sun’s magnetic field) they’re not like terrestrial storms that can blow up dust and dirt.

Ebola ‘risen from the dead’ zombie story

The story of dead Ebola victims rising from the dead, with the first “picture” of one of the zombies that has gone viral, (if it weren’t glaringly obvious) is a hoax. The image on the article, while impressive, is in fact doctored picture of a zombie from the film World War Z. It appears to have taken an image of one of the film’s lab-zombies, and merged it with this picture of a “realistic movie sculpture” from Schell Studios, which the message board 8chan pointed out.

Obsessive selfie-taking classified as a mental disorder

An article claimed that the American Psychiatric Association (a real body) had classified new mental disorder “selfitis” as “the obsessive compulsive desire to take photos of one’s self and post them on social media”.

Shipwrecked British woman saved by Google Earth

The extraordinary story of Gemma Sheridan, a woman from Liverpool saved by Google Earth after seven years stranded on a desert island, whipped up a storm among social media users. Aside from the fairly incredible details involved in the story, a wide range of issues showed it is quite clearly a hoax – including pictures and whole swathes of text borrowed from other (real) reports.

Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson is dead

The Rock became the latest victim of a death hoax this month after rumours circulated that the action star had died while filming a dangerous stunt for the upcoming Fast and Furious 7 on Thursday. The bogus report was created by Global Associated News, a website responsible for some of the most outlandish recent fake celebrity deaths, and went viral on Twitter and Facebook.

MH370 was caused by aliens/Snowden/the Bermuda Triangle

Since the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished on 8 March with 239 people on board, the story has sparked a host of myths and conspiracy theories. While some of these theories as to how the flight could have just disappeared have not been discounted by authorities, others have tended towards the unusual, bizarre and downright ridiculous. One Malaysian politician claimed the Bermuda Triangle must have moved to Vietnam. A ‘citizen reporter’ said radar picked up a UFO. Another said there was a complicated link to former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. None are likely to be true.